In one swamp I had bizarrely fast spawns for some reason, and ran into issues. I ended up just building a raised wooden walkway all the way through most of the swamp.

Used the short verticals as feet, so it's just barely off the ground. Mobs on foot can't seem to get on top of the platforms, son only ranged units (skels and draugur) were an issue.

Every once in a while, I built stairs up to a higher 2X2 platform, then stairs down on the other side, and continued the walkway on father. I shoot from the top of the higher 2x2.

Later on I saw a guy basically doing the same thing in a video, except he was just using the hoe to make a flat leveled walkway all the way through the swamp. Doh. Never thought of that, that person (which I cannot remember) is a genius.

On one run where I had way too much stone and wood laying about, I built a covered bridge cart-way from Meadows thru Swamp to the nearest crypt. Used 6-8 meter high single block pillars of earth or those invulnerable trees for support every 8 to 10 meters along the way. Minimum height above ground through the Swamp section was around 7 meters.

Used 26 degree roofs as flooring to change elevations to match ground height along the way. Was completely insane but worked great.

Sometimes exiting the Swamp can also be an epic battle. I had just finished setting up a bungalow on stilts, to function as a shelter, marina & portal. Forgetting to designate a corresponding portal to access it, at my main portal hub. I could see I had an active portal to the south on a nearby island, which was close enough to swim to after some island hopping. Between the last section of swamp, and a series of meadow islands, I had raised the land with my hoe a few months back, when I initially discovered it. As I was travelling along this narrow strip of partially raised ground, as the swamp was transitioning to meadow, I disturbed an Abomination. I had very little land available, that was above the waterline, and both sides of the isthmus was crawling with leeches. Not only were my hammer & pick broken after spending a few days exploring the swamp, but my bow had just broken a couple of minutes prior to engaging the Abomination. Coming at me from the meadow side were some skeletons, and from the swamp there were 3 Draugr & 2 blobs, and 2 wraith. As soon as things started getting crazy I popped the Bonemass buff, and decided to try and take out the Abomination first with my axe & shield equipped. I drained myself of stamina a couple of times, when my axe triple swing special missed making contact with the Abomination, despite the fact that I was directly underneath it. My life nearly ended, until I remembered I had medium health pots in my action bar. I then decided to save the Abomination for last, that the blobs and the wraiths were greater threat.

It was the closest I've come to dying, without actually dying, in a long, long time. Due to the location, I could not retreat, and due to my broken bow I could not kill from distance or kite any enemies. Swinging at the Abomination, and hitting only air nearly got me killed two times, as did trying to block with little or no stamina as both wraiths were lunging at me.

All in all it was an encounter I will not soon forget.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838664097

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838667277

Originally posted by blprice61:

As an archer primary most runs, I find the Abominations to be.. a pain in the rear.. pretty much useless as killing them requires kiting them out of the swamp or else they'll just run away as soon as you get a good burn stack going on them. In that sense they are like the graylings of the swamp.

The root armor set seems far more helpful to melee primaries who want to use a bow once in awhile. While the poison resist helm is nice, resist meads work fine and as for the chest penetration resist, playing a ranged character it is pretty easy to just zig zag, strafe, and use obstacles to foul up enemy archers. Maybe worthwhile later for skeeters but it comes with a 'please burn me' weakness so... not entirely sold on that. Then there is the movement penalty.. so meh.

I've killed a lot of aboms and although they run off when they get badly wounded they'll often circle back as long as you keep a legit pathing position. Plus a few long distance fire arrows don't hurt either

Built a lodge in the meadows that borders swamp and went hunting for abominations to get materials for root armor. Found one, shot it with my bow to lure it back to the meadows, and as I was moving back another abomination spawned out of the ground that I was waking on about giving me heart failure right then and there (as old as I am that was a serious threat to my life).

I had to divert a bit to keep both of them off me and ran past a structure with a body pile in it so Dragur started spawning and joined the chase. I zig zagged a bit and caught the attention of some skeletons that decided to join the chase, splashed through water and got bit by leeches, got hit by a blob that also decided to follow.

Finally made it to the meadow with my lodge and the boar, deer, neck, and graylings came to my defense (not really, the menagerie I was trailing stopped long enough to kill them which gave me time to trim the foliage and kill off the small stuff so I could concentrate on the 2 abominations).

I kept leading the abominations retrograde around the lodge. It took me about 10 minutes and over 100 flaming arrows but i managed to kill both of them. That was the 2nd and 3rd abominations I had ever attempted to kill in this game. I decided to be better prepared the next time I went abomination hunting. Scooped up the boar meat, deer meat, and the neck tails that the bad guys so thoughtfully provided me.

As an archer primary most runs, I find the Abominations to be.. a pain in the rear.. pretty much useless as killing them requires kiting them out of the swamp or else they'll just run away as soon as you get a good burn stack going on them. In that sense they are like the graylings of the swamp.

The root armor set seems far more helpful to melee primaries who want to use a bow once in awhile. While the poison resist helm is nice, resist meads work fine and as for the chest penetration resist, playing a ranged character it is pretty easy to just zig zag, strafe, and use obstacles to foul up enemy archers. Maybe worthwhile later for skeeters but it comes with a 'please burn me' weakness so... not entirely sold on that. Then there is the movement penalty.. so meh.

That is indeed awesome! Wish I could've witnessed that myself. :D

Originally posted by blprice61:

So killed Elder, went looking for seeds in the Swamp, at least that was the idea. At the edge had to fight the expected leeches and blobs, and just for fun the game decided I needed to meet draugr and skeletons. If that wasn't enough it then threw a wraith at me, thought the coast was clear, stepped into the Swamp, and an Abomination came after me. All this and haven't even made it 5 meters into the Swamp yet on this run!

I'd like to hear from others with tales of initial Swamp entry gone sideways.

[edit] Finally did get my seeds though and had to run from the Abomination to escape the Swamp with them.

Really hoping for this same type of experience when first exploring the Mistlands. If it was easy it wouldn't be as much fun!

Most recently I was doing a no-portals run, and the Bonemass swamp was quite a ways out, surrounded by plains. I didn't want to do a "beach assault" of the swamps so close to sundown, so I searched frantically for somewhere else to land and found a tiny black forest island that was attached to a tiny plains island. Neither had anything on them, so I landed, pitched my lean-to, and passed the night.

In the morning I fed myself, got in my boat and made landfall in the swamp. Just as my boat slid into land, an abomination rose up right next to the boat! I didn't want it crushing my boat that had all my worldly possessions on it, so I jumped off and tried pulling it away. I fended off a band of draugr and skeletons with some health remaining, just to be shot in the back by a draugr archer and killed!

Woke up in my undies on an empty island with leach filled water that I would drown in anyways, between me and all my stuff. Not to mention the abomination standing next to it.

I just called it permadeath and started over on a new world. :-)

Originally posted by TangoBlue:

Then I aggro'd an Abomination (!@#$%). I ran to the forest nearby and a 1 star Troll noticed me (double !@#$%). I managed to bring the Troll and Abomination together and they fought to see who would get to chow down on me.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837894894

I do that for fun now. Almost as much fun as finding a greydwarf spawner next to a fuling village, or a fuling village next to a big tar pit!

There's not much more exciting in the game than having a whole fuling village on your tail while you try to avoid getting tarred!

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

I do that for fun now. Almost as much fun as finding a greydwarf spawner next to a fuling village, or a fuling village next to a big tar pit!

There's not much more exciting in the game than having a whole fuling village on your tail while you try to avoid getting tarred!

Oh yeah! My best so far involved a Fuling Village (with 3 berserkers), a Tar pit (with 4 boogers), 2 Lox and getting hit with "You Are Being Hunted" (approx. 30 wolves). Thank God there was a large rock nearby. It gave me a front row seat to the most awesome brawl that I've seen in game in a year and a half of playing.

My biggest regret was that I didn't take screenies or record it because...Damn! What a battle.

So there I was, crossing a swamp. I had run out of food and my health had dropped to 25 (not a good idea). No worries, I are experienced explorer and headed to a place I could set up my portal for home and stock up on food.

Then I aggro'd an Abomination (!@#$%). I ran to the forest nearby and a 1 star Troll noticed me (double !@#$%). I managed to bring the Troll and Abomination together and they fought to see who would get to chow down on me.

Keeping up with my idiocy, I stayed and watched the fight. The Troll won (barely). I shot the Troll with a wooden arrow and killed him.

Set up a portal and went home and logged off for the day to recover. A little more excitement than I needed at the time.

Remember kids, eat and keep your health and stamina up. You never know when you'll need to run fast and far.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837894894

Sometimes exiting the Swamp can also be an epic battle. I had just finished setting up a bungalow on stilts, to function as a shelter, marina & portal. Forgetting to designate a corresponding portal to access it, at my main portal hub. I could see I had an active portal to the south on a nearby island, which was close enough to swim to after some island hopping. Between the last section of swamp, and a series of meadow islands, I had raised the land with my hoe a few months back, when I initially discovered it. As I was travelling along this narrow strip of partially raised ground, as the swamp was transitioning to meadow, I disturbed an Abomination. I had very little land available, that was above the waterline, and both sides of the isthmus was crawling with leeches. Not only were my hammer & pick broken after spending a few days exploring the swamp, but my bow had just broken a couple of minutes prior to engaging the Abomination. Coming at me from the meadow side were some skeletons, and from the swamp there were 3 Draugr & 2 blobs, and 2 wraith. As soon as things started getting crazy I popped the Bonemass buff, and decided to try and take out the Abomination first with my axe & shield equipped. I drained myself of stamina a couple of times, when my axe triple swing special missed making contact with the Abomination, despite the fact that I was directly underneath it. My life nearly ended, until I remembered I had medium health pots in my action bar. I then decided to save the Abomination for last, that the blobs and the wraiths were greater threat.

It was the closest I've come to dying, without actually dying, in a long, long time. Due to the location, I could not retreat, and due to my broken bow I could not kill from distance or kite any enemies. Swinging at the Abomination, and hitting only air nearly got me killed two times, as did trying to block with little or no stamina as both wraiths were lunging at me.

All in all it was an encounter I will not soon forget.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838664097

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838667277

My first swamp encounter was not nearly that spectacular, but I was VERY surprised when I was trying to block a draugr axe with my trusty wooden shield that had served me so well in the black forest.

Yeah, that hit hurt. Went straight through my shield. I somehow survived just to step in the water to attack those nice colorful worms, only to get... poisoned.

Yeah, I didn't live much longer. Thankfully that was right at the border to a patch of meadows. A few meters away I had restored a very small hut, so I awoke there butt naked.

The draugr were not pleased.

They attacked my hut, broke through the wood and killed me in my bed.

And again.

Finally, the game had some pity on me and the bed broke. I woke up in the stone circle and thought, "How the f*** am I going to get my stuff back?", and, "Do I really have to slog through that whole black forest again to get to that stupid swamp?"

Yeah, I had a portal in that hut, but I was still fairly new to the game, and didn't think about taking portals with me everywhere I go.

So, I did go back there, and thankfully the draugr had retreated, so veeeeery carefully I could retrieve my stuff. Everything was looking good.

Or so I thought.

I was just done when I heard a deep rumble.

You can guess what followed next. ;)

Imagine if you will, two viking buddies who, coming down off an adrenaline rush from besting a troll, were wandering along the coast mining tin and picking thistle. Suddenly a movement not too far away caught their eye.

What's this? Another person? A new friend?! The human figure is walking back and forth between some sort of new trees that the pair had not seen before. It looked like it was lost. Not wanting to be ungracious, the pair head towards the figure with the intention of helping them out.

"Hello, friend!" They wave, but then grow slightly concerned when it starts raining and the smell of damp, foul mud and mould assault their senses.

Our intrepid heroes meander ever closer to the figure who seems to see them finally and ambles slowly in their direction.

Unfortunately it is only then they see the vacant dead stare and the sickly green skin that they realise their mistake - but it was too late. This was human but well and truly cursed. And it was charging towards them. One of our vikings is downed in a single blow. The other stumbles back, barely evading the rusty axe being swung at them, then turns tail and runs and runs and runs until she has returned to the relative safety of the Black Forest.

Her counterpart returns to the land of the living, naked as the day he was born - and just as angry - and together they return to the coast and spend the next twenty minutes trying to evade the being that throttled them so soundly upon introduction while rescuing his hard-won armour and weapons.

----

Yeah... We got trounced the first time we found a swamp. We'd had no spoilers as to what the swamp was like so the draugr were a surprise. LOL This was loooong before the Abominations were a thing.